Donald Trump on Tuesday night assumed the mantle of presumptive
nominee and declared: “We want to bring unity to the Republican Party.
We have to bring unity.”

Three days later, the GOP is tearing itself apart.

Friday brought another day of incredible division and revolt with
Jeb Bush and Lindsey Graham falling in line not behind Trump, but behind
House Speaker Paul Ryan, who said a day earlier that he cannot yet
support the brash real estate mogul as his party’s standard-bearer.

Trump, instead of trying to make peace, lashed out.

He fired off a vicious statement, calling Graham an “embarrassment” with “zero credibility.”

Then he laced into both of his former rivals during his rally in
Omaha, Nebraska, where he is continuing to campaign ahead of Tuesday’s
primary, despite having vanquished the rest of the GOP field.

“But I won’t talk about Jeb Bush. I will not say — I will not say
he’s low energy. I will not say it,” Trump told a boisterous crowd who
booed at the mention of his critics. “I will not say it. And I won’t
talk about Lindsey Graham, who had like 1 point, you ever see this guy
on television? He is nasty. … He leaves a disgrace, he can’t represent
the people of South Carolina well.”

Trump also alternated on Friday between shrugging off Ryan’s bombshell announcement and scorching him.

During a phone interview with Fox News, Trump said he was “very, very
surprised” at Ryan’s comments. “It’s hard to believe,” he said, adding,
“It doesn’t bother me at all.”

His tweets, however, suggest otherwise.

“So many great endorsements yesterday, except for Paul Ryan!” Trump
tweeted. “We must put America first and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Roughly 90 minutes later, Trump came back with a sharp critique of
another comment Ryan made Thursday. “Paul Ryan said that I inherited
something very special, the Republican Party. Wrong, I didn't inherit
it, I won it with millions of voters!” Trump wrote on Twitter.

The sharpest words, however, came from Trump’s spokeswoman, Katrina
Pierson. Not only did she say it’s incumbent upon Ryan to be the one
bringing unity to the party, she suggested Ryan may be ill-suited for
his current job.

Asked pointedly by CNN’s John Berman whether Ryan is fit to be
speaker if he can’t come around to supporting Trump, Pierson responded,
“No, because this is about the party.”

In the 10 months since Trump descended the escalator at Trump Tower
to announce his presidential bid in front of paid actors, the Republican
Party has failed to coalesce around a strategy on how to marginalize
the reality TV star.

Now that Trump’s the presumptive nominee, a full-bore GOP civil war
has broken out, dividing the party into factions that are providing
fresh headaches for Republican National Committee Chairman Reince
Priebus.

Priebus on Friday tried to encourage his fellow Republicans to put
down their arms. Sitting down for a one-hour conversation with
POLITICO’s Mike Allen, the beleaguered party leader repeatedly stated
that it’s just been three days since Trump became the presumptive
nominee, and that it’s going to take time for Republicans to absorb
their new reality.

Priebus said Trump understands that the party has to unify wide blocs
of voters, and he dismissed the latest furor over Trump’s tweet
celebrating Cinco de Mayo with a picture of him tucking into a taco
bowl.

“He’s trying, and honestly, he’s trying and I will tell you what, I
honestly think he understands that building and unifying and growing the
party is the only way we’re going to win," Priebus said. "And I think
he gets that.”

Playing the role of chief GOP diplomat, Priebus empathized with Ryan,
who said on Thursday afternoon that he’s “not ready” to support Trump
and that, “I think what a lot of Republicans want to see is that we have
a standard-bearer that bears our standards.”

Priebus said the speaker is “being honest, and I know how he feels.”

“And so, I'm comfortable with the idea that it is going to take some
time in some cases for people to work through differences,” he said. “We
talked about it and talked about it multiple times, and they're very
comfortable with sitting down with Donald Trump, and it may be at my
office, it may be somewhere else, but we're going to have that meeting
to start the process of unifying.”

Ryan’s office announced later on Friday that the high-stakes meeting will happen next Thursday with Priebus in tow.

"Having both said we need to unify the party, Speaker Ryan has
invited Donald Trump to meet with members of the House Republican
leadership in Washington on Thursday morning to begin a discussion about
the kind of Republican principles and ideas that can win the support of
the American people this November. The Speaker and Mr. Trump will also
meet separately, along with RNC Chairman Reince Priebus," the statement
read.

The Republican leaders will have plenty to discuss, including the
growing number of former Republican candidates who are ripping up their
former pledges to the RNC to support the eventual nominee.

Lindsey Graham on Friday first issued a statement and then went on
CNN — the same venue Ryan used — to explain why he can’t support Trump.

He said he couldn't back Trump because he doesn't think he is a "reliable Republican conservative, nor has he displayed the judgment and temperament to serve as commander in chief."

Jeb Bush took to Facebook to announce his disavowal.

“The American Presidency is an office that goes beyond just politics.
It requires of its occupant great fortitude and humility and the
temperament and strong character to deal with the unexpected challenges
that will inevitably impact our nation in the next four years,” Bush
said in his post.

“Donald Trump has not demonstrated that temperament or strength of
character,” he continued. “He has not displayed a respect for the
Constitution. And, he is not a consistent conservative. These are all
reasons why I cannot support his candidacy.”

It’s not clear when Trump’s most recently downed rivals will announce their positions.

Ted Cruz, who dropped out Tuesday night after Trump’s blowout win in
Indiana, has not yet indicated to people close to him what he'll do
regarding an endorsement. John Kasich, who dropped Wednesday, has been
quiet about what's next, but according to a source close to the
governor, the early indicators are that he's unlikely to throw his
support behind Trump.

But not everyone is forswearing the real estate mogul, with some
stating that it’s important to bring the party together for its battle
against Hillary Clinton.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Friday said he will support
Trump, after previously calling the billionaire a “liberal Democrat.”

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, who had endorsed Cruz, said he’s now all-in for Trump.

“I’m fully supportive of our presumptive nominee, and I do think
Donald Trump will do well in the state of Indiana,” Pence told
reporters, according to Indianapolis' Fox affiliate. “I’m going to campaign hard for the Republican nominee because Indiana needs a partner in the White House.”

And Ryan’s counterpart in the Senate isn’t on the same page, at least publicly.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell earlier this week offered a
tepid endorsement of Trump, remarking in a statement that "I have
committed to supporting the nominee chosen by Republican voters, and
Donald Trump, the presumptive nominee, is now on the verge of clinching
that nomination."

With Congress coming back to Washington next week, Republicans will have plenty to talk about.
In the meantime, there’s at least one Washington figure reveling in the GOP’s identity crisis — President Barack Obama.

He came out at the top of the daily news briefing to talk about the
latest jobs numbers, but was clearly ready to talk Trump. When asked
about Ryan’s stunning announcement from the day before, Obama told
reporters — with a smirk — that he couldn't begin to guess what will come of the civil war.
"I think you have to ask Speaker Ryan what the implications of his comments are," Obama said.

How
will the news media handle the battle between Hillary Clinton and
Donald Trump? I suspect I know the answer — and it’s going to be deeply
frustrating. But maybe, just maybe, flagging some common journalistic
sins in advance can limit the damage. So let’s talk about what can and
probably will go wrong in coverage — but doesn’t have to.

First,
and least harmful, will be the urge to make the election seem closer
than it is, if only because a close race makes a better story. You can
already see this tendency in suggestions that the startling outcome of
the fight for the Republican nomination somehow means that polls and
other conventional indicators of electoral strength are meaningless.

The
truth, however, is that polls have been pretty good indicators all
along. Pundits who dismissed the chances of a Trump nomination did so
despite, not because of, the polls, which have been showing a large
Trump lead for more than eight months.

Oh,
and let’s not make too much of any one poll. When many polls are taken,
there are bound to be a few outliers, both because of random sampling
error and the biases that can creep into survey design. If the average
of recent polls shows a strong lead for one candidate — as it does right now for Mrs. Clinton — any individual poll that disagrees with that average should be taken with large helpings of salt.

A
more important vice in political coverage, which we’ve seen all too
often in previous elections — but will be far more damaging if it
happens this time — is false equivalence.

You
might think that this would be impossible on substantive policy issues,
where the asymmetry between the candidates is almost ridiculously
obvious. To take the most striking comparison, Mr. Trump has proposed huge tax cuts
with no plausible offsetting spending cuts, yet has also promised to
pay down U.S. debt; meanwhile, Mrs. Clinton has proposed modest spending
increases paid for by specific tax hikes.

That is, one candidate is engaged in wildly irresponsible fantasy while the other is being quite careful with her numbers. But beware of news analyses that, in the name of “balance,” downplay this contrast.

This
isn’t a new phenomenon: Many years ago, when George W. Bush was
obviously lying about his budget arithmetic but nobody would report it, I
suggested that if a candidate declared that the earth was flat,
headlines would read, “Shape of the Planet: Both Sides Have a Point.” But this year it could be much, much worse.

And
what about less quantifiable questions about behavior? I’ve already
seen pundits suggest that both presumptive nominees fight dirty, that
both have taken the “low road” in their campaigns. For the record, Mr.
Trump has impugned his rivals’ manhood, called them liars and suggested
that Ted Cruz’s father
was associated with J.F.K.’s killer. On her side, Mrs. Clinton has
suggested that Bernie Sanders hasn’t done his homework on some policy
issues. These things are not the same.

Finally,
I can almost guarantee that we’ll see attempts to sanitize the
positions and motives of Trump supporters, to downplay the racism that
is at the heart of the movement and pretend that what voters really care
about are the priorities of D.C. insiders — a process I think of as
“centrification.”

That
is, after all, what happened after the rise of the Tea Party. I’ve seen
claims that Tea Partiers were motivated by Wall Street bailouts, or
even that the movement was largely about fiscal responsibility, driven
by voters upset about budget deficits.

In
fact, there was never a hint that any of these things mattered; if you
followed the actual progress of the movement, it was always about white
voters angry at the thought that their taxes might be used to help Those
People, whether via mortgage relief for distressed minority homeowners
or health care for low-income families.

Now
I’m seeing suggestions that Trumpism is driven by concerns about
political gridlock. No, it isn’t. It isn’t even mainly about “economic
anxiety.”

Trump support in the primaries was strongly correlated with racial resentment:
We’re looking at a movement of white men angry that they no longer
dominate American society the way they used to. And to pretend otherwise
is to give both the movement and the man who leads it a free pass.

In
the end, bad reporting probably won’t change the election’s outcome,
because the truth is that those angry white men are right about their
declining role. America is increasingly becoming a racially diverse,
socially tolerant society, not at all like the Republican base, let
alone the plurality of that base that chose Donald Trump.

Still,
the public has a right to be properly informed. The news media should
do all it can to resist false equivalence and centrification, and report
what’s really going on.

Back in the fall of 1989, a group of
researchers published a paper looking at the ways in which individuals
contort the circumstances surrounding them into their preexisting world
views.

This particular investigation, titled
“Expert Decision Making in Evolving Situations,” gave 11 groups of Army
intelligence analysts a realistic battlefield scenario and asked them
to assess the most likely avenue for an enemy attack. The scenarios were
largely the same, though with slight variations to produce different
answers. Each group was given time to study and each expressed
confidence in their answers.

The noteworthy stuff is what came
next. The groups were given updated intelligence reports and asked to
reconsider their assessments. Some reports contained items confirming
initial judgements. Others were designed to spur skepticism. The
majority were neutral. The process was then repeated two more times.

In the aggregate, the level of
confidence should have stayed roughly the same. But what the researchers
found was that the groups grew more convinced in their initial
judgements the more information they received. Only one of the 11 teams
changed its assessment of how the enemy would attack. Seven of the 11
teams expressed more confidence in their call over time.

Additionally, the subjects gave
significantly more weight to information that reinforced their earlier
decisions. Not only that, but when presented with contradictory
evidence, they were dismissive or downplayed its significance.

Confirmation bias like this had been
observed before. What stood out to the researchers was that individuals
trained to be open and sober-minded were now exhibiting it.

“The results of this experiment lend
support to the general conclusion that trained subjects in an evolving,
realistic, decision environment demonstrate performance characteristics
similar to those of novices working with less realistic and relatively
more static scenarios,” the study read. “Specifically, confidence in an
initial hypothesis is generally high, regardless of the hypothesis.”

Presidential
campaigns are not literal battlefields. And voters are not Army
intelligence analysts. But as the 2016 general election comes into
focus, the same behavioral patterns observed in this study will play a
significant role in determining the next president.

Donald Trump, the presumptive
Republican nominee, filleted a field of 17 Republican primary candidates
by branding them in uniquely terrible ways: Little Marco Rubio, Lyin’
Ted Cruz and Low Energy Jeb Bush. With his attention shifting to
November, the fear among preternaturally panicked Democrats is that he
will do the same against his likely opponent: Hillary Clinton. Trump has
already begun trying, adding the descriptive “Crooked” to her first
name.

But political scientists and branding
experts aren’t so sure that he’ll find much success. And it goes back
to “Expert Decision Making in Evolving Situations.” Referencing that
specific study, Timothy Calkins, a clinical professor of marketing at
the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, noted just
how hard it is to mold perceptions when people have already thought
through their choices.

“It is very hard to reposition a
well-established brand, and what we have here are two really
well-established brands,” Calkins said of the election matchup. “There
is a whole idea of mental exhaustion. When you force people to really
think about something, it is difficult and challenging. And the easy
thing to do is to just not think about it. For someone to really
challenge and change their beliefs requires a lot of energy.”

When you force people to really think about
something, it is difficult and challenging. And the easy thing to do is
to just not think about it.Timothy Calkins, a clinical professor of marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University

At
its current juncture, the Democratic primary is boiling down to a fight
over electability. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who trails in pledged
delegates, has argued that party insiders should switch their votes to
him precisely because his polling numbers are better suited for the
general. And that’s true. Sanders does better in mock contests against
Trump. His favorability ratings are far superior to Clinton’s.

These strengths, however, are
somewhat cosmetic. Though he’s been on the trail for over the year,
Sanders is not as known a political figure as Clinton. He’s faced a tiny
sliver of the negative attacks. As The Huffington Post reported
in mid-April, of the roughly $383 million spent on campaign television
advertising in 2016, only about 2 percent was on anti-Sanders ads, much
of which just briefly mentioned his name or featured his image.

“People are pointing to his general
election numbers as being stronger than Clinton’s, and that’s largely a
byproduct of the fact he hasn’t seen incoming fire,” said Brendan Nyhan,
a political science professor at Dartmouth College and a columnist for
The New York Times.Clinton, by contrast, presents a
surer bet, albeit with less potential upside. Should she secure the
Democratic nomination, she would have a favorability rating worse than
any general election candidate in history ... save for Trump himself.

But she brings advantages to the ticket too.

On the trail, Clinton touts the
political battles she’s experienced as proof that she can succeed where
Little Marco, Lyin’ Ted and Low Energy Jeb failed. The impression left
is that she has the political acumen to navigate a race against Trump.
But what she is also underscoring is that she has the longevity to not
be defined by her opponent. Like those Army intelligence officers, the
voters have studied her resume, and new parcels of information will
simply be plugged into their preexisting views.

“People have an amazing ability to reinforce what they believe,” said Calkins.

Consider this: In public opinion polls, a full 96 percent of the public is able to rate Clinton either unfavorably or favorably, the same percentage as Trump. By comparison, 86 percent of the public was able to rate Mitt Romney
when he was the presumptive nominee in May of 2012. In July of 2015 —
roughly when the Republican primary began — 67 percent of the public was
able to rate Ted Cruz and 64 percent of the public was able to rate Marco Rubio.

The public is about as likely to have a strong opinion about Clinton at the start of the general election as they were to have any
opinions about Cruz or Rubio at the beginning of the GOP primary.
Across recent polls, more than 60 percent rate her at one extreme or the
other: either “very favorably” or “very unfavorably.” Since last June,
her numbers have moved relatively little, considering all the
campaigning and negative headlines. Her average unfavorable rating has
drifted from the high 40s to the low- to mid-50s, but that is likely due
to dissipating goodwill from her time as secretary of state. Her
favorable rating has dropped, but it’s likely to rise again should
disaffected Democrats (Sanders supporters) come back on board.

The
numbers are relatively static for Trump, too. Despite being the most
divisive political figure in the country over the past year, his
unfavorable rating remains in the low 60s (the same place it was in June
2015). His favorable rating is the one that’s changed, rising from the
mid-20s to the mid-30s, presumably as Republican primary voters have
gotten to know him as a politician.

“Look at Trump,” said Nyhan. “With
all the stuff that has been said about him, his unfavorables ... they
barely changed. This whole time. With everything that has been said
about him. It is strikingly stable.”

In
a year without Trump, the case could be made that Clinton would be a
serious gamble for Democrats — voters’ confirmation biases would be
working against her were she facing a more-liked Republican nominee. But
there are other factors influencing elections beyond a candidate’s
favorability rating. Often, in fact, favorability ratings tend to be
overstated as a metric. Nyhan has written extensively about this.

While it might seem obvious that
people vote for the candidate they like best, that notion often gets the
direction of causality backward. In the heat of the campaign, we
ultimately tend to find reasons to support candidates who share our
party affiliation or seem to have a good record in office (and to oppose
candidates who do not).

Certainly, there are exceptions to the rule that party, not personality, is more determinative of election results. Trump could very well be one.
The outsized force of his personality overshadowed nearly all the
traditional contours of the Republican primary, and the next six months
will test whether partisanship is an even stronger motivation.

But by and large, as the general
election progresses, the expectation among political scientists is that
we will enter a more stable race than the current political commentary
foreshadows. Republican voters will warm up to the nominee. Beleaguered
Sanders supporters will find a way to Clinton. A brutally negative
campaign will be waged, but confirmation biases will once again take
hold.

“Public opinion figures tend to
converge,” Nyhan noted. “When Al Gore ran, Democrats weren’t
enthusiastic about his candidacy but they mostly made their peace with
him. [Senator] John McCain had incredible favorability numbers. But to
win the nomination he became a classic Republican, and he ended up
performing like a general Republican when the election came around. So
personal qualities tend to be overstated relative to other structural
factors.”

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post
misstated what Donald Trump has been calling Hillary Clinton. He has
been using the term “crooked,” not “corrupt.”

No comments:

LinkWithin

Put Guahu / About Me

This blog is dedicated to Chamorro issues, the use and revitalization of the Chamoru language and the decolonization of Guam. This blog also aims to inform people around the world about the history, culture and language and struggles of the Chamorro people, who are the indigenous islanders of Guam, Saipan, Tinian, Luta and Pagan in the Mariana Islands. Pues Haggannaihon ha', ya taitai na'ya, ya Si Yu'us Ma'ase para i finatto-mu.

Statcounter Code

The Revolution Will Not Be Haolified

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE HAOLIFIEDTinige’ as Guahu - 2003 (updated 2008)

You will not be able to ignore it che’lu * This time you will not be able to blame it all on Anghet * You will not be able to change channels * And watch Fear Factor, Rev TV of Salamat Po Guam because * The Revolution will not be televised

The revolution will not be televised, nor will it be advertised * It will not be sponsored by the Good Guys at Moylan’s or the better guys at AK. * It will not be something easily explained by radio callers * Whether they be Positively Local, Definitively Settler, or Surprisingly Coconut * It will not be cornered by the Calvos and explained by Sabrina Salas * Matanane * After the story about the incoming B-52’s or 1000’s of Marines careening towards to Guam, and how we * should be economically energized and not terrorized. * Jon Anderson will have no TT anecdotes about it * and Chris Barnett won’t malafunkshun it because the revolution will not be televised

The revolution will not be televised or editorialized * It will not be something canabilized with two inches here two inches there * Dubious headlines everywhere * Lee Weber will not edit it * Joe Murphy will not put it in his pipe and smoke it * Nor dream about it, or tell others the wonders and blunders of it. * There will be no letters to the editor quoting scriptures or denying its constitutionality * And there will be no American flag inserts saying these three colors just don’t run * As the revolution will not be editorialized

The revolution will not be televised or politicized * It will not play the same old gayu games * And promise you that same old talonan things. * The revolution will not wave at you as you drive by on Marine Drive * And seduce you with its hardworking eyes. * It will not be territorial or popular, and not encourage you with maolek blue. * The revolution will not put marang salaman po after its speeches to get more Filipino votes in the next election because the revolution will not be politicized

The revolution will not be televised, not be theorized * It will not be something GCC or UOG friendly. * There will be no books at Bestseller offering to help you lose something in 90 days * Or Rachel Ray helping you cook the revolution of your way. * Ron McNinch will not survey it * and will not poll people about their revolution of choice. * There will be no WASC review report demanding accountability demanding autonomy * And no beachcombing carpetbaggers will proclaim their own terminal authority * Over the histories, the laws, the thinking of those for whom they see nothing but corrupt and corrupting inferiority * The revolution will not be colonized

The revolution will not be televised, not be supersized. * The revolution will not be something you can buy at Ross, or get at blue light cost * It is not just red rice, kelaguan uhang, or popcorn with Tobacco sauce. * It doesn’t come with Coke and it doesn’t fit on a fiesta plate. * The revolution will not make you gof sinexy, cure your jafjaf, or make fragrant your fa’fa’ * The revolution will not force you to be where America’s empire begins * Or where Japan’s golf courses and Gerry Yingling’s credit card debt ends. * You won’t need a credit card, or be charged for the tin foil to cover your balutan * As the revolution will not be economized

The revolution will not be televised, blownback or militarized * There will be no more physical ordnance buried in people’s lands * And no more patrionizing propaganda buried in people’s minds * The revolution will not get you cheaper cases of chicken or increased commissary privileges. * It will not make freedomless flags feel more comfortable in your hands * Or make uniforms fit more snugly around your mind. * The revolution will not deny racism or exploitation * And not create histories about landfalls of destiny * But instead publicize the racism and evils of American hegemony. * The revolution will not be subsidized by construction contracts or the race of Senator Inouye or Congressman Burton * It will not be laid waste to by daisy cut budgets or Medicare spending limits * Instead it will be sustained by deep memories that refuse to die * The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be televised and will not polarize based on blood or color * It will not make your skin lighter * It will not make your skin darker * It will not test your blood the way Hitler or Uncle Sam would of done * It will not hate some and love others based on their time of naturalization * Or incept date of their compacts of free association. * But the revolution will help some find comfort, find strength, find power * In their connections to the land and to each other * Allow some to discover the sovereignty that can be found in solidarity * The revolution will take and remake this consciousness that doesn’t need to be televised * But does need to be revolutionized * The revolution will not be haolified * The revolution will not be haolified